Sometime around about April Fools' Day, Joan Walsh jumped the shark. Since then, she's got caught out and called out in remarks that were just the teensy-weensiest bit racist, although Joan, being Joan and a bona fide bastion of the Progressive Left abjectly and vociferously denied that she was racist in anyway, whilst at the same time just as vociferously resenting any claim that African Americans could have to being part and parcel of the base whom Joan declares the President has abandoned so callously.
One thing led to another, and Joan got more than a bit rude with several people who disagreed with her point of view on certain things - most notably the fact that since the President declared his intent to run for re-election in 2012, Joan's been on a massive downer and appears to be suffering from DODS - Delayed Obama Derangement Syndrome.
In her last blog, usually written after an appearance on Chris Matthews's Hardball, she admitted that Obama appeared to have a "mirage" of support - which means that he might have the appearance of support amongst his base (whoever and whatever his base may be), but it really isn't support as such.
That confused me. Does that mean people will say they'll support him and then vote the Republican ticket? Or that they'll say they voted but in reality they stayed at home? Who knows? Still, that didn't confuse me as much as her next assertion, made in a Twitter exchange on June 23rd:-
@dpleasant @LaurieInQueens I'm convinced some of the most vicious pro-Obama people are paid by GOP
Mouths closed yet? Chins picked up off the floor?
Yep, you read right. Joan thinks that some of the most "vicious" Obama supporters are paid GOP trolls. She was most likely referring to me, in our last direct exchange, when she accused me of working for Breitbart, simply because I disagreed with her gratuitous criticism. More apt were my accusations that she was climbing on the Obama-bashing bandwagon to prove her own relevancy and to fit in more as an "esteemed" (but unpaid, according to Joanie - yeah, sure) political contributor for MSNBC.
(If you think all those "political contributors" just sit around the table shooting the breeze with Joe and Cenk and Chris and Larry and newly-minted lyin' liar Rachel just for a cuppa Starbucks and a camera in their face for nothing, you seriously need to get out more.)
I know Joan's recently read "Nixonland" and I know the GOP are famous for their infiltration tactics as a part of their ratfucking techniques, but gone are the days of Donald Segretti. Instead, if Joan bothered to open her eyes and ears, she'd find that there are a lot of pretty intelligent, normal, hard-working, everyday people who see exactly what the President has done, how he's done it and - above all - why he's had to do things the way he has. Such people are these that they understand how government works, they know the President doesn't legislate, and, furthermore, they know that in a democracy, one discusses, debates and compromises.
These people know that change that lasts is often incremental. Some of us might remember when FDR implemented Social Security and how it covered a fraction of the people it covers today. Others might remember Jim Crow, still more might remember when a female teacher got paid considerably less than a male counterpart.
These people are the ones who remember that the President has always said that change comes from the bottom up, which is a euphemism for the aristocratic FDR's direct command of "make me."
And these are the people who listened to Candidate Obama's speeches and realised, if not from their content than from reading his work, The Audacity of Hope, that the man presented himself as nothing more than a Left of Centre pragmatist in the mold of his hero, Abraham Lincoln.
If these people are now vociferous to the point of vicious in their support of the President, it's simply because we're effing mad at the trust fund kids from the Progressive end of the political spectrum slamming the President on everything he does and doesn't do to their specification. We're sick and tired of being called Obamabots and derided on sites like Daily Kos, which was allegedly founded as a Democratic website and has turned into a den of hatred for people specialising in pissing on the President and pushing the meme that he's done nothing, yet all the while proclaiming that this criticism is constructive and it's purely done in the name of political policy.
My blue Democratic ass.
The Right walk around with signs of the President dressed like witch doctor with a bone through his nose, and the Firebaggers at FDL get a pass when they refer to him as "boogalu Bush."
The Right accuse him of being a Kenyan mau-mau, while Progressives openly refer to him as the "Affirmative Action President."
Joan would do well to remember that it was a fellow PUMA who started the birther myth in earnest, and she would do well not to forget the PUMA woman who stridently declared she would support no other than John McCain, when Hillary dropped out of the race, because she simply couldn't understand why Democrats would set aside a well-qualified white woman in favour of a black man.
The Right assert that the President is a weak leader, and Joan obliges by pushing the same meme. The Right treat him with open disrespect, while the Left act like Miss Scarlett about to smack Prissy from sheer frustration.
His supporters are sick and tired of being referred to as sycophants for "Dear Leaders" and called "Obama-Lovers" by her newest pet blogger, Glenn Greenwald, who appears to be the tail wagging Salon's dog to such a degree that Joan has to slavishly echo his critique.
In short, our "vicious" support of the President is simply nothing more than a reaction to an irresponsible, lazy, assumptive and downright untrustworthy media who like to think that the majority of Americans are totally incapable of thinking for themselves and need political action explained to them, but always with a spin. And if you're canny enough to disagree, you're deserving of the rudness thrown in your direction.
So, sorry, Joan, "vicious" supporters of the President aren't paid GOP trolls, but whiners, whingers, moaners, and relentless fault-finders and criticizers such as you and the mean girls and guys around you are the underminers taking the corporate penny of people whose agenda is to see the President fail.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the ratfucker after all?
Speaking Truth to the Power of the Lying Liars of the US Media, Right AND Left.
Showing posts with label Glenn Greenwald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Glenn Greenwald. Show all posts
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Rude Pundits
I’m about to date myself, but I can remember when the only political pundits and commentators were the ones who had regular columns in the big regional newspapers – people like Drew Pearson, Jack Anderson, David Broder and George Will, who seems to have been around since g-d was a boy. I also remember when network news was the half-hour broadcast after the regional news every evening about 7pm, with two fifteen-minute blurbs on the weekends. Sundays gave us half an hour of Meet the Press, when a politico really did meet the press and get grilled by them, and another half hour of Face the Nation, when a different panel of pressmen (and, occasionally, a woman) did the same to another elected or appointed government official. The only real poltical opinon talk show was another half hour feature entitled Issues and Answers.
If the public wanted to respond to points raised by these various individuals, especially the political journalists who appeared in the print media, their only recourse was the good, old-fashioned Letter to the Editor of the paper in which the offending column appeared. If you were lucky, maybe your letter got published in the appropriate section. If not, you’d had your say and had to live with the assumption that the editorial department conveyed your opinions, along with those of other members of the public who’d taken the time to put pen to paper and write, to the journalist in question. Either way, unless the journalist addressed these opinions in another column, you got no feedback.
Nowadays, with the internet and social networking sites, more and more self-appointed political pundits are using this media, in addition to more traditonal forms, to spread their opinions to a wider audience. Further still, many double as “political contributors” to the various 24/7 cable news outlets. Like rock and film stars of old, these people have accumulated a devoted following, and some have reached near iconic status.
This past week, I learned a couple of things.
First, I learned that this deviant form of the Fourth Estate is a closed shop which closes rank and protects its own ferociously. I’m not surprised by that. Most professions do form a protective shield around any of their own who seem to be attacked from without. Police, firefighters, teachers, doctors … it’s common practice to look after your own. And any from within those ranks who whistle blow or take the side of the accusing outsider are given pretty short shrift from their own within their profession.
Earlier this week, David Sirota and Ed Schultz engaged in a shrieking session with each other on Sirota’s radio program, the likes of which made Rush Limbaugh look positively polite. Sirota was peeved because Schultz had, a week earlier on his television program, castigated Michael Moore for his reactions to the shooting of Osama bin Laden. In Sirota’s opinion, Schultz had crossed the loyalty line in telling Moore, as Sirota perceived, to STFU and get in line behind the President.
Let me say that I have no particular liking for either Sirota or Schultz as political commentators of any realiability. Both, in my opinion, have done more than enough in the past to alienate and divide the Left, and both have a reputation for being, at times, openly rude and disdainful towards the public to whom they’ve given an opportunity to interact directly with them. But I happened to see the segment on Schultz’s show where he took issue with Moore.
Unusually for Schultz, he was unfailingly polite in his disagreement, moreso than he would have been, had Moore’s sentiments been uttered by either Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. Then you would have heard bullish comments, snark and a lot of ad hominem. Because Moore was from the same side of the political coin, Schultz treated the matter with great respect, offering kudos to Moore as a great voice from the Left and giving him credit for his work regarding the health and financial industries.
Ed simply thought that at this point, regarding bin Laden, it might be helpful to present a united front. Yes, he did call for the liberal hand-wringing to stop, but because the Right, ever the opportunists, would cherrypick any and all opposition and use it in the up-coming campaign to present the Left and the Democrats as a party, hopelessly riven by division and, because of this, weakened by it. After all, it was the first Republican President, Lincoln, who reiterated that a house divided against itself cannot stand.
So Sirota took this and spun it, inviting Ed onto his show as a telephone guest, and asked him about the legality of bin Laden’s killing. And then proceeded to engage in a screaming contest, when Schultz began by saying that the Attorney General had said that the killing had been legal under the circumstances. The exchange became, quite honestly, incomprehensible, until the point that Schultz told Sirota to go to hell, and Sirota cut the mic in order to gloat. When he opened the microphone a few seconds later, Schultz had hung up.
Sirota’s gloating point was that the Attorney General was an appointee of the Administration, so he probably would be complicent in upholding bin Laden’s killing. I don’t know how Schultz could have elaborated on his point, because he was never given the opportunity, once he’d expressed his original opinion. I don’t know if he were planning on pointing out as well that a State Department attorney had also expressed an opinion on the legality of the Seals’ actions, or if – more importantly and independently of any association with the Obama administration – ex-Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens had publically declared bin Laden’s killing to be perfectly legal under the circumstances.
We’ll never know, because Sirota managed to shut Schultz the fuck up in exactly the same way he’d accused Schultz of attempting to do to Moore – albeit he did manage to level the accusation directly to Schultz of being turning on one of his own kind. And then Sirota was back the next day, same time and same station, chest beating like an Alpha male, bragging about out-bullying a bully. Suffice it to say, that all the ensuing calls in the phone-in were those selected who were favourable to Sirota’s handling of the incident.
So the first lesson learned is that the gentlemen and ladies of political punditry don’t disagree with those who purport to be from the same side of the political blanket. Fair enough.
But some of these people punt their wares on social networking sites, inviting comments on their latest opinion blogs, and some of them respond to the comments. That’s fair enough too, as long as these high-profiled and high-principled people remember that the public responding might be people who like and admire their work immensely, but at times, they might disagree with a particular point or opinion. In this regard, some self-appointed pundits have proven to be remarkably thin-skinned.
One, allegedly, has compiled an enemies’ list of bloggers and commentators on the internet, most ordinary people who don’t blog for money, who’ve been critical of continuous barrage of unfounded criticism he’s levelled at the current President. This same pundit has acquired a reputation for sock puppetry, showing up in various guises (but always with the same IP address) on his critics’ blogs, to level ad hominem remarks about what they’ve written.
The normally sensible Joan Walsh has literally imbedded herself in an ongoing argument with African American bloggers on Twitter after one lady politely sought to correct Joan in her assumption that Progressives made up the base of Obama’s support. The lady on Twitter was correct: Progressives do not make up the base, either of the President’s support or that of the Democratic party. If they are the base of the party, it’s a pretty shifty one at that, when any accomplishment by the President or the party is disdained and scorned. The argument progressed until Walsh rather tactlessly admitted resentment that African Americans should consider themselves the base of support for the President, and it’s continued from there, to the point where, last Sunday night, one of the bloggers in question was engaged in a discussion with someone else, and Walsh waded in, uninvited, and turned the discussion into one concerning, yes, race, again.
Walsh is known, both on her Facebook page and on Twitter, to meet anyone disagreeing with her point of view with the cleverly unfunny advice to the commentator to “get help.” In one of the recent Twitter exchanges with the African American bloggers, she uttered to one that “it must suck to be you.”
Really, this is the stuff of high school girls, but that doesn’t detract from its rudeness.
These people are paid professionals with high public profiles. If they are going to allow an exchange of ideas with the reading, listening or viewing public, then they have to show themselves above criticism and meet it in an adult and professional manner. And that doesn’t mean, as Walsh went on to brag to a crony on Twitter after the Sunday night encounter, “punching down.”
Social networking sites are great equalisers, if the personality in question invites comment in which he or she participates. Why do it and then pull rank against people who are, at best, internet ghosts? Or maybe that’s why it’s done, because these entities are faceless, nameless ephemera.
The political pundit class, which seems to be reproducing itself at an alarming rate lately, has done a remarkable job on the Left, in incessantly urging, encouraging and promoting criticism of this President and his Administration. The old cry of “holding his feet to the fire” has become gratuitous. We’re asked to fall in line behind the pundit of our choice and carry his or her banner, worship at his altar, even defend all criticism of the chosen one against any critique levelled with the ferocity with which we would defend a slight to the honour and person of a close relative, friend or loved one.
That was the second lesson learned this week: that whilst it’s perfectly permissable to criticize a President from our party ceaselessly and unremorselessly, we daren’t criticize the punditry. It’s they, you see, who’ve taken on the thankless task of speaking for us lesser mortals. How many times have I heard people say that this one or that one is “our voice,” how we need them and how missed they’d be if they weren’t about? And how many times are we deceived, such as when Arianna Huffington made the middle class her pet cause and pushed the meme that the Obama Administration was totally against them, on the back of Huffington Post’s unpaid labour policy? In the wake of Ed Schultz’s recent praise of the President, how many remember him urging Progressives not to vote in the Midterms? How many remember Glenn Greenwald’s 2006 anti-immigration blog or that he writes for the Koch-founded and funded Cato Institute?
Back in the days of Anderson and Broder, when Huntley and Brinkley and wise Uncle Walter gave us thirty minutes of the top news each evening, where were the voices who spoke for us then? They were in our minds, and they bore fruition at the ballot box.
I guess rude pundits are the fashion of the day, but I’ve never been one to follow fashion.
If the public wanted to respond to points raised by these various individuals, especially the political journalists who appeared in the print media, their only recourse was the good, old-fashioned Letter to the Editor of the paper in which the offending column appeared. If you were lucky, maybe your letter got published in the appropriate section. If not, you’d had your say and had to live with the assumption that the editorial department conveyed your opinions, along with those of other members of the public who’d taken the time to put pen to paper and write, to the journalist in question. Either way, unless the journalist addressed these opinions in another column, you got no feedback.
Nowadays, with the internet and social networking sites, more and more self-appointed political pundits are using this media, in addition to more traditonal forms, to spread their opinions to a wider audience. Further still, many double as “political contributors” to the various 24/7 cable news outlets. Like rock and film stars of old, these people have accumulated a devoted following, and some have reached near iconic status.
This past week, I learned a couple of things.
First, I learned that this deviant form of the Fourth Estate is a closed shop which closes rank and protects its own ferociously. I’m not surprised by that. Most professions do form a protective shield around any of their own who seem to be attacked from without. Police, firefighters, teachers, doctors … it’s common practice to look after your own. And any from within those ranks who whistle blow or take the side of the accusing outsider are given pretty short shrift from their own within their profession.
Earlier this week, David Sirota and Ed Schultz engaged in a shrieking session with each other on Sirota’s radio program, the likes of which made Rush Limbaugh look positively polite. Sirota was peeved because Schultz had, a week earlier on his television program, castigated Michael Moore for his reactions to the shooting of Osama bin Laden. In Sirota’s opinion, Schultz had crossed the loyalty line in telling Moore, as Sirota perceived, to STFU and get in line behind the President.
Let me say that I have no particular liking for either Sirota or Schultz as political commentators of any realiability. Both, in my opinion, have done more than enough in the past to alienate and divide the Left, and both have a reputation for being, at times, openly rude and disdainful towards the public to whom they’ve given an opportunity to interact directly with them. But I happened to see the segment on Schultz’s show where he took issue with Moore.
Unusually for Schultz, he was unfailingly polite in his disagreement, moreso than he would have been, had Moore’s sentiments been uttered by either Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. Then you would have heard bullish comments, snark and a lot of ad hominem. Because Moore was from the same side of the political coin, Schultz treated the matter with great respect, offering kudos to Moore as a great voice from the Left and giving him credit for his work regarding the health and financial industries.
Ed simply thought that at this point, regarding bin Laden, it might be helpful to present a united front. Yes, he did call for the liberal hand-wringing to stop, but because the Right, ever the opportunists, would cherrypick any and all opposition and use it in the up-coming campaign to present the Left and the Democrats as a party, hopelessly riven by division and, because of this, weakened by it. After all, it was the first Republican President, Lincoln, who reiterated that a house divided against itself cannot stand.
So Sirota took this and spun it, inviting Ed onto his show as a telephone guest, and asked him about the legality of bin Laden’s killing. And then proceeded to engage in a screaming contest, when Schultz began by saying that the Attorney General had said that the killing had been legal under the circumstances. The exchange became, quite honestly, incomprehensible, until the point that Schultz told Sirota to go to hell, and Sirota cut the mic in order to gloat. When he opened the microphone a few seconds later, Schultz had hung up.
Sirota’s gloating point was that the Attorney General was an appointee of the Administration, so he probably would be complicent in upholding bin Laden’s killing. I don’t know how Schultz could have elaborated on his point, because he was never given the opportunity, once he’d expressed his original opinion. I don’t know if he were planning on pointing out as well that a State Department attorney had also expressed an opinion on the legality of the Seals’ actions, or if – more importantly and independently of any association with the Obama administration – ex-Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens had publically declared bin Laden’s killing to be perfectly legal under the circumstances.
We’ll never know, because Sirota managed to shut Schultz the fuck up in exactly the same way he’d accused Schultz of attempting to do to Moore – albeit he did manage to level the accusation directly to Schultz of being turning on one of his own kind. And then Sirota was back the next day, same time and same station, chest beating like an Alpha male, bragging about out-bullying a bully. Suffice it to say, that all the ensuing calls in the phone-in were those selected who were favourable to Sirota’s handling of the incident.
So the first lesson learned is that the gentlemen and ladies of political punditry don’t disagree with those who purport to be from the same side of the political blanket. Fair enough.
But some of these people punt their wares on social networking sites, inviting comments on their latest opinion blogs, and some of them respond to the comments. That’s fair enough too, as long as these high-profiled and high-principled people remember that the public responding might be people who like and admire their work immensely, but at times, they might disagree with a particular point or opinion. In this regard, some self-appointed pundits have proven to be remarkably thin-skinned.
One, allegedly, has compiled an enemies’ list of bloggers and commentators on the internet, most ordinary people who don’t blog for money, who’ve been critical of continuous barrage of unfounded criticism he’s levelled at the current President. This same pundit has acquired a reputation for sock puppetry, showing up in various guises (but always with the same IP address) on his critics’ blogs, to level ad hominem remarks about what they’ve written.
The normally sensible Joan Walsh has literally imbedded herself in an ongoing argument with African American bloggers on Twitter after one lady politely sought to correct Joan in her assumption that Progressives made up the base of Obama’s support. The lady on Twitter was correct: Progressives do not make up the base, either of the President’s support or that of the Democratic party. If they are the base of the party, it’s a pretty shifty one at that, when any accomplishment by the President or the party is disdained and scorned. The argument progressed until Walsh rather tactlessly admitted resentment that African Americans should consider themselves the base of support for the President, and it’s continued from there, to the point where, last Sunday night, one of the bloggers in question was engaged in a discussion with someone else, and Walsh waded in, uninvited, and turned the discussion into one concerning, yes, race, again.
Walsh is known, both on her Facebook page and on Twitter, to meet anyone disagreeing with her point of view with the cleverly unfunny advice to the commentator to “get help.” In one of the recent Twitter exchanges with the African American bloggers, she uttered to one that “it must suck to be you.”
Really, this is the stuff of high school girls, but that doesn’t detract from its rudeness.
These people are paid professionals with high public profiles. If they are going to allow an exchange of ideas with the reading, listening or viewing public, then they have to show themselves above criticism and meet it in an adult and professional manner. And that doesn’t mean, as Walsh went on to brag to a crony on Twitter after the Sunday night encounter, “punching down.”
Social networking sites are great equalisers, if the personality in question invites comment in which he or she participates. Why do it and then pull rank against people who are, at best, internet ghosts? Or maybe that’s why it’s done, because these entities are faceless, nameless ephemera.
The political pundit class, which seems to be reproducing itself at an alarming rate lately, has done a remarkable job on the Left, in incessantly urging, encouraging and promoting criticism of this President and his Administration. The old cry of “holding his feet to the fire” has become gratuitous. We’re asked to fall in line behind the pundit of our choice and carry his or her banner, worship at his altar, even defend all criticism of the chosen one against any critique levelled with the ferocity with which we would defend a slight to the honour and person of a close relative, friend or loved one.
That was the second lesson learned this week: that whilst it’s perfectly permissable to criticize a President from our party ceaselessly and unremorselessly, we daren’t criticize the punditry. It’s they, you see, who’ve taken on the thankless task of speaking for us lesser mortals. How many times have I heard people say that this one or that one is “our voice,” how we need them and how missed they’d be if they weren’t about? And how many times are we deceived, such as when Arianna Huffington made the middle class her pet cause and pushed the meme that the Obama Administration was totally against them, on the back of Huffington Post’s unpaid labour policy? In the wake of Ed Schultz’s recent praise of the President, how many remember him urging Progressives not to vote in the Midterms? How many remember Glenn Greenwald’s 2006 anti-immigration blog or that he writes for the Koch-founded and funded Cato Institute?
Back in the days of Anderson and Broder, when Huntley and Brinkley and wise Uncle Walter gave us thirty minutes of the top news each evening, where were the voices who spoke for us then? They were in our minds, and they bore fruition at the ballot box.
I guess rude pundits are the fashion of the day, but I’ve never been one to follow fashion.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
No Mercy Shown, No Mercy Given
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GROW InfoLetter to the EditorPolls, Graphs and ResearchProjectPOVReference InfoTroll Busters!No Mercy Shown, No Mercy GivenMarion On May - 4 - 2011It didn’t take long before the verbal snipers came out to play in the wake of Bin Laden’s death. It wasn’t enough that most of the Republicans, with few exceptions, were crediting the abysmal George W Bush with the end game which came Sunday evening. I wondered how many days’ grace, how many hours even, would transpire before various tranches of the media would, if not seek to turn bin Laden into the martyr figure he doesn’t deserve to be, or how many would criticize the spontaneous reactions of various American citizens to the news of this man’s death.
Just as we’ve got smacked the birthers’ collective asses with the long-form birth certificate, now we have to contend with the deathers, led by both Andrew Breitbart from the Right and Glenn Greenwald, who pretends to be from the Left, but sucks up to the Koch-founded and funded Cato Institute.
As expected, we’ve got people clamouring for sights of bin Laden’s corpse pictures, taken for identification purposes in the wake of his untimely demise, to the extent that the White House is now debating releasing them to the public.
I can understand their reluctance. I’m not too keen on seeing the body of this evil man with half the side of his head blown to smithereens and his brains oozing out over immediate creation. I had enough of that with the grainy Zapruder film years ago, showing a President’s brains being blown out the back of his head. I also understand that the White House, unlike such bastions of good taste as Messrs Breitbart, Greenwald and Judge Andrew Napolitano, is sensitive to the fact that such pictures might offend some people – in particular, people of the Muslim faith; that such images would also only serve to flame certain elements intent on furthering bin Laden’s agenda.
I have no problem with that. Nor do I have any problem believing the man is, in fact, dead, and was killed on Sunday, as stated. And I certainly don’t have any problem with the definitive fact, being confirmed by the White House, in the wake of a lot of instant folklore stories which arose around the 40 minutes of firepower three days ago, that bin Laden was unarmed when killed.
Here was a man who masterminded the tragedy of 9/11, as well as the train bombing in Madrid the following year and the London bombings a couple of years later. He was behind the Bali disco bombing, amongst other things. All those thousands of people of all nationalities from New York to Madrid to Bali to London, were all unarmed and going about their normal lives when bin Laden sought to play god and end them. He showed no mercy, and no mercy should be shown him.
Taking him alive would have created all sorts of problems – where to incarcerate him, how long before he came to trial, where to hold the trial … If New York couldn’t stage the civil trial of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who the hell would take on hosting a venue for the trial of someone like bin Laden? That trial would have been bigger than Nuremberg. What about the punishment? If the trial were in the US, there would surely be a death sentence. If he were tried in The Hague, a life sentence, and he would still be alive as an idealogical embodiment, if nothing else. No, I’m content with one man copping a bullet for the thousands, the millions, who’ve died as a result of his actions and manipulations.
Various people in the media are trying to carve a moral high ground from this morass, and they’d be well-advised not to attempt this, because the most unclean moral lepers of modern society are usually found amongst the denizons of the Fourth Estate. Yesterday, The Guardian led with a long op-ed by the Egyptian journalist, Mona Eltahawy, scathingly criticizing the “frat boy” antics of the students who gathered at Ground Zero upon learning of bin Laden’s death. This meme was pithily picked up by Glenn Greenwald and fomented, adding a soupcon of falsity to his diatribe by stating as fact that Leon Panetta was wondering salaciously and openly who might portray him when they made the Hollywood version of the killing of bin Laden. Greenwald’s “fact” was later proven to be an outright fabrication. A lie.
As for Eltawahy, her article was a blatant piece of hypocrisy, when compared to her assessment of the Egyptian uprisings in an interview she did with Bill Maher in February:-
In case Mona is unaware of the fact, most of those whom she decried as “frat boys,” celebrating at Ground Zero on Sunday night, were, actually, just that: frat boys. College students. The actual equivalents of those students, those young Egyptian people, she so eloquently and often rudely defended to Bill Maher. Just as those kids had grown up and reached maturity in the shadow of Hosni Mubarak, so those kids partying at Ground Zero and in front of the White House, had lived from childhood with the spectre of Osama bin Laden as the epitome of the bogeyman. They shouted, they screamed, they sang patriotic songs of their country, probably laced heavily with drink. At the end of the day, they had something to celebrate, like the Egyptians in the square in Cairo. And Ms Eltahawy, a journalist in their midst, was not stripped, attacked and raped.
I know it’s utterly impossible for most people and pundits on the Right, as well as some of the so-called more enlightened folk of the ueber Left, to admit that this President is capable of walking down the street and chewing gum at the same time. Everything he’s done is wrong, even when whatever he’s done has been what he’s promised to do. Nothing’s ever good enough for some people. We all know why critics from the Right have a particular problem with anything the President does or doesn’t do, and as time progresses, we have a pretty good idea why his critics from the ueber Left (veering into the Right’s territory) cleverly hide something more sinister and ugly behind the facade of ideals and policy particulars.
At the end of the day, it all amounts to the same thing. Time we gave the pundits no mercy either.
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GROW InfoLetter to the EditorPolls, Graphs and ResearchProjectPOVReference InfoTroll Busters!No Mercy Shown, No Mercy GivenMarion On May - 4 - 2011It didn’t take long before the verbal snipers came out to play in the wake of Bin Laden’s death. It wasn’t enough that most of the Republicans, with few exceptions, were crediting the abysmal George W Bush with the end game which came Sunday evening. I wondered how many days’ grace, how many hours even, would transpire before various tranches of the media would, if not seek to turn bin Laden into the martyr figure he doesn’t deserve to be, or how many would criticize the spontaneous reactions of various American citizens to the news of this man’s death.
Just as we’ve got smacked the birthers’ collective asses with the long-form birth certificate, now we have to contend with the deathers, led by both Andrew Breitbart from the Right and Glenn Greenwald, who pretends to be from the Left, but sucks up to the Koch-founded and funded Cato Institute.
As expected, we’ve got people clamouring for sights of bin Laden’s corpse pictures, taken for identification purposes in the wake of his untimely demise, to the extent that the White House is now debating releasing them to the public.
I can understand their reluctance. I’m not too keen on seeing the body of this evil man with half the side of his head blown to smithereens and his brains oozing out over immediate creation. I had enough of that with the grainy Zapruder film years ago, showing a President’s brains being blown out the back of his head. I also understand that the White House, unlike such bastions of good taste as Messrs Breitbart, Greenwald and Judge Andrew Napolitano, is sensitive to the fact that such pictures might offend some people – in particular, people of the Muslim faith; that such images would also only serve to flame certain elements intent on furthering bin Laden’s agenda.
I have no problem with that. Nor do I have any problem believing the man is, in fact, dead, and was killed on Sunday, as stated. And I certainly don’t have any problem with the definitive fact, being confirmed by the White House, in the wake of a lot of instant folklore stories which arose around the 40 minutes of firepower three days ago, that bin Laden was unarmed when killed.
Here was a man who masterminded the tragedy of 9/11, as well as the train bombing in Madrid the following year and the London bombings a couple of years later. He was behind the Bali disco bombing, amongst other things. All those thousands of people of all nationalities from New York to Madrid to Bali to London, were all unarmed and going about their normal lives when bin Laden sought to play god and end them. He showed no mercy, and no mercy should be shown him.
Taking him alive would have created all sorts of problems – where to incarcerate him, how long before he came to trial, where to hold the trial … If New York couldn’t stage the civil trial of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who the hell would take on hosting a venue for the trial of someone like bin Laden? That trial would have been bigger than Nuremberg. What about the punishment? If the trial were in the US, there would surely be a death sentence. If he were tried in The Hague, a life sentence, and he would still be alive as an idealogical embodiment, if nothing else. No, I’m content with one man copping a bullet for the thousands, the millions, who’ve died as a result of his actions and manipulations.
Various people in the media are trying to carve a moral high ground from this morass, and they’d be well-advised not to attempt this, because the most unclean moral lepers of modern society are usually found amongst the denizons of the Fourth Estate. Yesterday, The Guardian led with a long op-ed by the Egyptian journalist, Mona Eltahawy, scathingly criticizing the “frat boy” antics of the students who gathered at Ground Zero upon learning of bin Laden’s death. This meme was pithily picked up by Glenn Greenwald and fomented, adding a soupcon of falsity to his diatribe by stating as fact that Leon Panetta was wondering salaciously and openly who might portray him when they made the Hollywood version of the killing of bin Laden. Greenwald’s “fact” was later proven to be an outright fabrication. A lie.
As for Eltawahy, her article was a blatant piece of hypocrisy, when compared to her assessment of the Egyptian uprisings in an interview she did with Bill Maher in February:-
In case Mona is unaware of the fact, most of those whom she decried as “frat boys,” celebrating at Ground Zero on Sunday night, were, actually, just that: frat boys. College students. The actual equivalents of those students, those young Egyptian people, she so eloquently and often rudely defended to Bill Maher. Just as those kids had grown up and reached maturity in the shadow of Hosni Mubarak, so those kids partying at Ground Zero and in front of the White House, had lived from childhood with the spectre of Osama bin Laden as the epitome of the bogeyman. They shouted, they screamed, they sang patriotic songs of their country, probably laced heavily with drink. At the end of the day, they had something to celebrate, like the Egyptians in the square in Cairo. And Ms Eltahawy, a journalist in their midst, was not stripped, attacked and raped.
I know it’s utterly impossible for most people and pundits on the Right, as well as some of the so-called more enlightened folk of the ueber Left, to admit that this President is capable of walking down the street and chewing gum at the same time. Everything he’s done is wrong, even when whatever he’s done has been what he’s promised to do. Nothing’s ever good enough for some people. We all know why critics from the Right have a particular problem with anything the President does or doesn’t do, and as time progresses, we have a pretty good idea why his critics from the ueber Left (veering into the Right’s territory) cleverly hide something more sinister and ugly behind the facade of ideals and policy particulars.
At the end of the day, it all amounts to the same thing. Time we gave the pundits no mercy either.
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